Free Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey

Ah!” sounds as she bounced and hit the saddle. Three times she went in a circle around the horsemaster, each time making more and more noise and making the horse try to break into a run. How the horsemaster kept him to a trot, Gwen could not imagine.
    It was a relief when she fell off.
    She immediately scrambled to her feet, face red with pain and rage. She looked about for something to hit the horse with but fortunately found nothing. The horsemaster pulled up on the lead and soothed the ruffled stallion, but he made no move to soothe Little Gwen.
    Interestingly, neither did the king.
    Neither man said anything to her as she stared at them in a fury. Gwen prudently backed away from everything and everyone until she had a horse or two between her and her sister. Best to not remind her just who had inspired this desire to have a horse.
    Finally, Little Gwen erupted in the tantrum that Gwen knew was inevitable. “I don’t want your old horses!” she screamed, making every horse in the paddock shy or lay its ears back. “I hate horses! You should kill them all and make soup out of them!”
    Then she burst into angry tears and ran off. Gwen slowly emerged from hiding. The king and his horsemaster were both shaking their heads. “She’s not hurt, is she?” the king asked.
    “Only a bit of bruising.” The old man gestured at the straw-strewn paddock. “That be why I kept her on the lead. And I grant ye, I could’ve made a longer affair of this, picked a horse fit for her, tried to get her to tend it as I know yon girl will, an’ the end of that’d be more work for me when she didn’t. So instead, I cut across country, give her what she wanted, and—”
    He shrugged. The king laughed ruefully.
    She’ll find something to take this out on, Gwen thought sourly. But then the horsemaster turned to see her standing there, and she tried to make her expression pleasant. “Nah, Braith’s girl, let’s find ye a proper horse.”
    In the end, it came to two, and the horsemaster couldn’t make up his mind which. One was a mare, one of the cavalry duns; the other was a stallion of the famous gray line, now almost a pure white, that had been both a chariot horse and a mount. After looking them both over for a long time, the horsemaster sighed and threw up his hands. “Naught for it,” he said. “Mun let them choose.”
    He put Gwen at one end of the paddock and turned the two horses loose. “Call ’em, Braith’s girl,” he told her, and stood away from her so that they would not react to his presence but to hers.
    Now alone in the paddock with them, her mouth went a little dry. They were very big, twice the size of the pony. She swallowed, licked her lips, and made the little chirruping sounds she made to call the pony to her.
    They both looked at her, ears and heads up.
    “Come!” she urged. “One of you has to teach me, now, so come!”
    The stallion snorted; the mare shook her head. Both of them started forward at the same time, but before they were halfway across the paddock, the dun mare shouldered the stallion aside with a snort of her own and laid-back ears. She picked up her feet in a trot that brought her to Gwen while the stallion slunk sheepishly off to one side.
    Gwen held out her hand and the mare nuzzled it, then put her head down and butted Gwen in the chest, blowing hay-scented breath into her tunic, surprising a delighted laugh out of her.
    The horsemaster brought saddle and bridle but waited while Gwen put them on, only giving her a hand when something was too far for her to reach. “Ye mun find ways t’be doing this on yer own, Braith’s girl,” he told her gravely. “I dun help the boys, I shan’t help ye.”
    She nodded. That was reasonable. So taking the hint, once the mare—Adara was her name—was saddled and bridled, on her own she took her over to a stump that had been incorporated into the paddock fence and used that to get herself into the saddle. Once there, she found it not as